Introduction:
Have you ever wondered what western mixed conifer forests would look like without fire suppression tactics? A reduction in fire suppression would allow mixed conifer forests to burn at one severity instead of multiple severities, such as in the School Forest. The School Fire in 2005 burned at different severities across the 21,000 ha of land near Pomeroy, Washington. The fire burned at three different severity levels: low, medium, and high. These three levels impacted the 21,000 ha differently and allowed different numbers of plants and trees to survive or regenerate depending on the severity of the fire and the fire adaptations each plant or tree species possess. Some salvage logging was done after the fire occurred and other areas were re-seeded with native grasses to reduce erosion and improve water filtration into the soil (Morgan et al 2015). Motivation: Sampling was conducted after the School Fire to inspect conditions and vegetation regeneration. After ten years research is still being conducted and data is still being collected. The Fire Ecology class at the University of Idaho is one of many groups still acquiring post fire data on the School Fire forest. The university would like to continue to research variables in fire severity and observe the regeneration of forested ecosystems. At the school fire there were three sites sampled (Figure 1) by the University of Idaho Fire Ecology class: Low fire severity, Logged, Low pre-fir stand density (LLL); Moderate fire severity, Logged, Low pre-fire stand density (MLL); and High fire severity, Logged, low pre-fire severity (HLL). All three sites varied in there degree of fire severity. Burn severity may have dramatic effects on density and height of seedlings across the sites and also control the degree of vegetation regeneration in each site. All three sites had a low pre-fire stand density and all three sites were logged after the fire occurred. The only factor present would be the severity of the fire in each site. A high severity stand will produce more nutrients for plants to use, but trees seeds on these sites will die due to overly intense heat (Baker 2009). New seeds would have to be spread across the barren ground, which will take more time, and cause reduced growth in height when compared to seedlings in low severity sites (Baker 2009). Hypothesis and Objective: My questions are: (H1) how does burn severity effect tree seedling density? (H2)I will also question: how will burn severity affects tree seedling height? (H1) I hypothesize there will be greater tree seedling on sites with low burn severity than on sites with high burn severity. (H2) I also hypothesize stands with lower fire severities will have greater seedling growth tree growth than stands with higher burn severities. (H1) There will be a greater quantity of tree seedlings in low burn severity conditions because low fire intensity would allow more seeds to survive and mature. There will be fewer tree seedlings in high burn severity conditions because a high intensity fire would kill more tree seedlings. (H2) There will be greater seedling …show more content…
This could be due to high severity sites having no over-story competition present. Low severity sites are going to have more shade tolerant species present and over-story competition which will cause these trees to grow at slower rate due to greater water and nutrient uptake (H2).
There are limitations to this data collected. Errors in collecting data from multiple students can be messy. Field data can also be entered wrong or mis-understood. One example of interpreting field instructions wrong would be: the transect width for sites LLL and MLL were six meters wide, while site HLL was also required to be a six meter wide transect many groups sampled a two meter wide transect for HLL. (Two meter wide HLL site data was removed from the data analysis. Only six meter wide data was used in this report).
In the future I would like collect more data to explore growth patters with shade tolerant and intolerant species on the LLL site. I would like to track their future growth patterns and limits, to observe changes in the density per meter^2 and the total number of stems, over
Have you ever wondered what western mixed conifer forests would look like without fire suppression tactics? A reduction in fire suppression would allow mixed conifer forests to burn at one severity instead of multiple severities, such as in the School Forest. The School Fire in 2005 burned at different severities across the 21,000 ha of land near Pomeroy, Washington. The fire burned at three different severity levels: low, medium, and high. These three levels impacted the 21,000 ha differently and allowed different numbers of plants and trees to survive or regenerate depending on the severity of the fire and the fire adaptations each plant or tree species possess. Some salvage logging was done after the fire occurred and other areas were re-seeded with native grasses to reduce erosion and improve water filtration into the soil (Morgan et al 2015). Motivation: Sampling was conducted after the School Fire to inspect conditions and vegetation regeneration. After ten years research is still being conducted and data is still being collected. The Fire Ecology class at the University of Idaho is one of many groups still acquiring post fire data on the School Fire forest. The university would like to continue to research variables in fire severity and observe the regeneration of forested ecosystems. At the school fire there were three sites sampled (Figure 1) by the University of Idaho Fire Ecology class: Low fire severity, Logged, Low pre-fir stand density (LLL); Moderate fire severity, Logged, Low pre-fire stand density (MLL); and High fire severity, Logged, low pre-fire severity (HLL). All three sites varied in there degree of fire severity. Burn severity may have dramatic effects on density and height of seedlings across the sites and also control the degree of vegetation regeneration in each site. All three sites had a low pre-fire stand density and all three sites were logged after the fire occurred. The only factor present would be the severity of the fire in each site. A high severity stand will produce more nutrients for plants to use, but trees seeds on these sites will die due to overly intense heat (Baker 2009). New seeds would have to be spread across the barren ground, which will take more time, and cause reduced growth in height when compared to seedlings in low severity sites (Baker 2009). Hypothesis and Objective: My questions are: (H1) how does burn severity effect tree seedling density? (H2)I will also question: how will burn severity affects tree seedling height? (H1) I hypothesize there will be greater tree seedling on sites with low burn severity than on sites with high burn severity. (H2) I also hypothesize stands with lower fire severities will have greater seedling growth tree growth than stands with higher burn severities. (H1) There will be a greater quantity of tree seedlings in low burn severity conditions because low fire intensity would allow more seeds to survive and mature. There will be fewer tree seedlings in high burn severity conditions because a high intensity fire would kill more tree seedlings. (H2) There will be greater seedling …show more content…
This could be due to high severity sites having no over-story competition present. Low severity sites are going to have more shade tolerant species present and over-story competition which will cause these trees to grow at slower rate due to greater water and nutrient uptake (H2).
There are limitations to this data collected. Errors in collecting data from multiple students can be messy. Field data can also be entered wrong or mis-understood. One example of interpreting field instructions wrong would be: the transect width for sites LLL and MLL were six meters wide, while site HLL was also required to be a six meter wide transect many groups sampled a two meter wide transect for HLL. (Two meter wide HLL site data was removed from the data analysis. Only six meter wide data was used in this report).
In the future I would like collect more data to explore growth patters with shade tolerant and intolerant species on the LLL site. I would like to track their future growth patterns and limits, to observe changes in the density per meter^2 and the total number of stems, over